A Big Victory For Equality?, Ctd

I think the nub of our disagreement is this: I’m concerned about the constitutional implications of the court’s willingness to jettison the principle of true equality based on a simple majority vote (even though, it must be said, there is some precedential support for its holding), while this reader sees things from a practical standpoint: All of the rights are still intact, and any effort to further limit them will have to be carefully crafted. Moreover, the court will read any restrictions very strictly, and might even be unwilling to support further compromises to equality.

This reader is probably right as to most of the above. But as I’ve stated, I don’t know (nor can anyone) how far the court would be willing to go in supporting more far-reaching restrictions on the rights of the GLBT community, including revoking domestic partnership protections.

But I see no real move to strip gay couples of such protections in California; and I see plenty of evidence that one result of this debate has been to establish domestic partnerships as the worst option. Without the marriage battle, that would never have happened. It's all good, even when it's bad. Patience ... and focus.

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